Neato Upgraded - initial feedback ...

[djos]

I got use use spot mode today, works great and is very effecive. definitely nice to have that back as I did miss this feature from our old roomba.

The only complaint I had with spot mode (version 2.0 - haven't tried 2.1 yet in spot mode) is that the initial placement of the Neato does not serve as the "center" of the area to be cleaned. I think human nature is such that when a spot needs to be cleaned, the user will have a tendency to place the robot on the dirtiest area of the spot.

With the Roomba, this works well, because the robot spirals outward from the center, then spirals back in. However, with Neato, the initial location of the robot serves as the BASELINE of the rectangle to be spot cleaned. Depending on how you align the actual robot, part of the spot may not get cleaned at all, because it may fall BELOW the baseline of the rectangle.

As I said, I haven't used spot mode yet in 2.1, but it seems to me, the initial spot where you place the robot should be considered the "center" of the area to be cleaned.

I put my Neato directly facing the center of the mess that needed cleaning (but not in the mess) and it drove a square pattern around the mess and then proceeded to clean inside the square very effectively.

Im running 2.1 so maybe there is a slight difference between 2.1 & 2.0 - I really liked the way it worked as my Neato never got any of the debris on its wheels like it would have if placed in the center of the debris field Roomba style.

EDIT: I just checked the current Neato User Guide from the web site and the behavior I witnessed is as designed:

1: Place the Neato Vacuum on the ground, centered, and facing the area to be cleaned, and press MENU.
2: Press the arrow buttons to select Spot Clean and then press SELECT.
3: The Neato Vacuum cleans the 4' by 6' area in front of it: first the outline of the area, and then the interior.

[dinkydong]

Noticed another difference after upgrading from SW 1.1.13354 to 2.1 and its related to charging. My XV-11 used to take about 4.5hrs to recharge after a scheduled cleaning session. Strangely, a few hours after its fully charged, it will begin charging again. WIthin 24hrs, it requires TWO charging sessions (evident from the pulsing status indicator). After i've upgraded to 2.1, it only takes a little less than 2.5hrs to recharge and it does not appear to charge again after its fully recharged.

[JEfromCanada]

EDIT: I just checked the current Neato User Guide from the web site and the behavior I witnessed is as designed:

1: Place the Neato Vacuum on the ground, centered, and facing the area to be cleaned, and press MENU.
2: Press the arrow buttons to select Spot Clean and then press SELECT.
3: The Neato Vacuum cleans the 4' by 6' area in front of it: first the outline of the area, and then the interior.

In other words, as I said before, the initial placement of the Neato defines the position of the BASELINE (the bottom of the rectangle to be cleaned).

It would have made more sense to me to place the Neato in the "center" of the area to be cleaned, and have the Neato clean an area 3' to the left and 3' to the right, by 2' up and 2' down.

Look at the attached picture for what I mean...

In the top picture, the Neato is positioned to clean a spot 6' x 4' above it. In the bottom picture, Neato is positioned to clean a spot 6' x 4' around it. Which one of these scenarios makes more sense to you?

I really liked the way it worked as my Neato never got any of the debris on its wheels like it would have if placed in the center of the debris field Roomba style.

You make a very good point about the wheels of the robot not getting as soiled because you're not starting out in the middle of the debris area. Despite this, I found that for me (and my furnishing situation), it was more difficult to estimate what area would be included in the cleaning and as a consequence, more difficult to decide where I should initially place the robot (in an area that had more than one "dirty" area within the 6x4 foot rectangle).

[djos]

Ah fair enuf, so far in my one experience, the Neato implementation has been great so I cant complain - looks like we'll have to agree to disagree on what implementation is better.

[mark.h.ellis]

Fortunately, reverting back to firmware 2.0 (SW: 2.0.14418 LDS: V2.6.14138 Board Rev: 113) the XV-11's behaviour is similar to the old 1.1release.

After the first run, these are my impressions:

1) Office chairs (5 legs) do not confuse the XV-11 anymore.

2) No more "back and forth dance" or unnecessary turn off of the brush.

3) Rooms boundaries are mostly correctly identified and the XV-11 cleans the whole room before going to the next. Sometimes the XV-11 repeatedly runs on the same path 2 o 3 times in rooms with a complex layout and I had under the impression it requires more time to do the same job. Maybe the last release (2.1) performs better (faster) than 2.0 and 1.1 on wider spaces and low density rooms (only).

4) The path described around the fornitures with firmware 2.0 is similar to the path outlined with firmware 1.1.

5) No more problems with narrow passages. I had my utility room cleaned.

I'm sorry, but I think that version 2.1 has lots of bugs and version 2.0 works far better (ver 1.1 too).

Anyway I suppose this strictly depends on the layout of the house. Mine is a flat with several small rooms (4m x 4m about), dense of fornitures.

Geppo I have to agree with you there!

I feel the new firmware is not as good as the last and will be downgrading mine. How do you go about reverting back to version 2.0? Mine was version 2.0 when I bought it.

I am not a big fan of cleaning the edges by spanning over multiple rooms and far preferred the previous method of doing the complete room edge first then filling in the middle before moving onto another room. This seems far more practical and more efficient in terms of distance travelled, battery life etc.

Mine failed to dock last night and drove straight past then errored out that it could not navigate. It had only cleaned half the house and when I manually redocked it it failed to continue after recharging. When I tried to restart it after the error occured & prior to picking it up it did the 'dance' backward & forward about 1cm then errored out again. This is something it never did prior.

I also feel it is bumping things alot more now since upgrading, perhaps this is a sacrifice of trying to get it to stick closer to the wall however I watched it drive straight the bed support post at full speed (4cm diameter leg). It also seems alot more confused spinning and standing on the spot in the middle of an area it has already cleaned hence it seems to clean the same areas alot more.

One thing that bugs the crap out of me is why it does not work out the longest run and clean in that direction therefore allowing less turns, I constantly watch it cleaning a rectangular space using the shortest side as its direction therefore doing way more turns than needed and also draining way more battery!! I know Neato read these forums so hopefully this will get addressed or upgraded in future.

Cheers

Mark

[jjay]

After some thoughts I decided to upgraded the firmware of my XV-11, to fix some small bugs and to get the spot cleaning feature, but after just two cleaning cicles I am disapponted.....

The previous firmware (SW: 1.1.13354 LDS: v2.4.13386 Board Rev: 113) had some small bugs (the 12/24h issue and it didn't go to the base station after pausing a cleaning job), but generally it works very well.

The new firmware seems to have a strange behaviour and possibly much more bugs than the previous version:

1)The XV-11 has hard problems with five-legs chair, it often unsuccessfully tries to go straight between two legs, and after 3 or 4 retries it give up, leaving the space uncleaned. With the previous firmware versione it methodically entered diagonally between a pair of legs, then went sequentially to the next until it finished without a hitch.

2)The XV-11 sometimes stops 10cm in front of a furniture (or even a wall), go rapidly back and forth just 1cm, then after 3 or 4 seconds, it give up, switching off the brush and leaving that space uncleaned. Please note there aren't any object on the floor like wire or cables, just clean space. With the old firmware, in the same place it NEVER had trouble and cleaned normally. Please note that this happened 6-7 times during the last cleaning job.

3) The cleaning path is much less "clean", the XV-11 does not understand the room boundary and the cleaning process begin in the first room for a little area and spans over 2 or 3 room simultaneosly, in a much less efficient mode. With the old firmware, the room boundary was (often) correctly identified and the cleaning process was completed for the whole room before going to the next.

4) The cleaning path stays 2cm away from the furnitures, while with the old firmware the XV-11 passed 0.5cm or less away from the furnitures.

5) With the new firmware the XV-11 seems unable to navigate in narrow passages (50cm x 1m) and it leaves them partially uncleaned. This did not happens with the old firmware.

Considering the large differences existing between 1.x and 2.x firmware releases and the related issues, I would like Neato Robotics makes the previous firmware releases available through their web site.

I have to agree with Geppo and also Mark on this. I have had the exact same experience with the upgrade from 2.0 to 2.1. The new upgrade is bad. Reverted back to 2.0 and neato works much better and more reliably it cleans the full room instead of going to another room and doing part of it. For some reason with 2.1 it would do most of the room but leave about 1 round and then try and do that last and it seemed to get confused like it had more left to do and just turn in circles. It also would act lost and not return to its base. It would get in one spot and keep trying to move ahead and bump into the furniture like there was a doorway to go through. Also with 2.1 the brush would stop turning randomly for just a second then come back on. I did like it when neato would get lost in a spot it would shut off the brush till it got its berings again to help save the battery power. With 2.1 it seemed to get lost much more than with 2.0. So I would not upgrade from 2.0 to 2.1 until the bugs get worked out or it.

[ffrcoupe]

Today was the 1st time I cleaned my room since the update. My room is small enough for Bubba to clean it on one charge. I noticed today that he asked for his bin to be cleaned mid mission. I paused him, took out the dirt bin and it was about 1/2 full so I emptied it. It is obviously more sensitive to how much dirt is in the bin vs. the previous version.

VERY nice update Neato.

[holmes4]

I did my first run with 2.1 yesterday. I noticed what others commented on regarding the better overlap and the occasional shutoff of the brush. In my case, it seemed to be partly related to when one of the Neato's wheels rolled up a sloped chair base.

I also noticed that it seemed much more hesitant around a 5-leg office chair - the old software (1.3) would turn into each opening in sequence, while 2.1, after circling a couple of times, made a halfhearted attempt to clean between the legs. I also noticed the changed docking behavior - in my case, it docked so "lightly" that at first it undocked itself, but it then corrected that. Even so, it was at an angle to the dock, which had never happened before.

No complaints at all about the cleaning ability - if anything I'd say it worked better on rugs than it had before. Maybe this was the multi-pass approach. It didn't take any longer to do the house than before.

[piokrza]

Today was the 1st time I cleaned my room since the update. My room is small enough for Bubba to clean it on one charge. I noticed today that he asked for his bin to be cleaned mid mission. I paused him, took out the dirt bin and it was about 1/2 full so I emptied it. It is obviously more sensitive to how much dirt is in the bin vs. the previous version.

VERY nice update Neato.

I'm curious if it's a simple timer-controlled alert or a sw update to make the resistance of its vacuum motor useful?

Could somebody make a simple test to confirm that? Just place a piece of paper in between the vacuum inlet and the bin - it show if it work.

[dinkydong]

After a few sessions with the 2.1 s/w, i have encountered the following:

1) Lots of 'back and forth' dances and a longer cleaning time as compared to v1.3 sw

2) For the 1st time, my XV-11 plays a mission completed tone right in front of its dock after completing its cleaning session, minus an actual docking!!! It found the dock, made a scan right in front of its dock, plays the completion tone and stops.


I think there are some bugs to work out in 2.1. Since there's no way for me to downgrade back to 1.3, i guess i'll have to give 2.0 a shot. For those thinking of upgrading from 1.3 to 2.1, u might like to reconsider.

[mark.h.ellis]

Ok I downgraded to firmware version 2.0 and placed MagNeato in the bedroom and started a manual clean.

He fired up and spun around a few times scanning the room then headed off to the areas he could not see before performing a complete perimeter clean and then filling in the middle areas without even hesitating unlike version 2.1 were he seemed to scan the room heaps and then there didn't seem a logical method of cleaning it.

I'm not sure if its me hearing things but I could swear the vacuum was stronger on verision 2.0, at times on version 2.1 in the same room (laminate bedroom) he literally sounded like he was struggling. Also to note is this downgrade and test clean happened the same hour!!

I most certainly would recommend most people stick with the current version until these bugs get ironed out.

[djos]

I just downgraded to 2.0 and I agree with the others who have done this, it's the best FW to date and I'm very happy with it - 2.1 was better than 1.2 but 2.0 is the best.

[dinkydong]

One more thing with 2.1... i'm being nagged to clean the filter if necessary! Is the detection based on airflow or merely removing the bin after x no. of runs? Anyone? Its getting to be a PIA... i wish there's an option to turn off this reminder.

[djos]

Based on the HEPA filter work that Fetish has done, I'm guessing it's based on air flow or load sensing on the vacuum motor.

[milillicuti]

Hi guys.
How can you downgrade your neato from 2.1 to 2.0 ? I upgraded mine from 1.2 firmware to 2.1 and i have the same problems as you have. How can i find 2.0 FW and upload it ?

Tx.

BTW, this HEPA filter is a really nice work ! The stock filter is one of the weakness of the robot.

[djos]

Hi guys.
How can you downgrade your neato from 2.1 to 2.0 ? I upgraded mine from 1.2 firmware to 2.1 and i have the same problems as you have. How can i find 2.0 FW and upload it ?

Tx.

BTW, this HEPA filter is a really nice work ! The stock filter is one of the weakness of the robot.

Simple, run the "check for upgrade" process again and it will tell you you have the latest version, would you like to downgrade to v2.0.

[fetish]

after trying both 2.0 and 2.1, i would say i love the docking maneuver of 2.1 but everything else should stay from 2.0.

[rstark18]

The one thing that is killing me about 2.1 is how it now bumps into everything. That was one of my STRONG dislikes about my Roomba 550. I will give 2.0 a shot and see how it goes.

[grinny11]

So I have come home two of the four days to find my Neato stopped in front of the dock turned around in another direction. I was hoping that the new firmware would fix the docking.

The other thing that really frustrates me is the clock reset. I came home and my clock said 0:00. I thought the new 2.1 firmware would fix this.

[milillicuti]

Simple, run the "check for upgrade" process again and it will tell you you have the latest version, would you like to downgrade to v2.0.

Thx ! So simple, i didn't tought about that ...
V.2.0 navigates slower than V.2.1. But it has a new behaviour i haven't noticed with V.2.1 : each time the robot is blocked and has to drive backward, his cute butt hits obstacles (furniture...) and lifts up. Have you noticed the same trouble ? I had no matter with the V.2.1 or my old V.1.2.